Many poets have found inspiration in the skylark, but of all the poems on the little bird, the most imaginative is surely Shelley’s ode? Here are three of its opening verses. The poem below it, by William Neill, has a more personal and elegiac message.

from Shelley’s TO A SKYLARK

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

Bird thou never wert,

That from Heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

~

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

~

The pale  purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of Heaven,

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

 LARK

Lark sings as she has always done

over the thorn hedge of the spring meadow.

Now my time’s very nearly run. . .

long gone the day of the coarse fellow

who heard the song and indifferently whistled

and thought of beef and beer and fun and girls,

ignoring warnings of his careless heading.

~

Now Lark has a deal more of attention:

a careful leaning on the broken gate.

I think of the subject we try not to mention,

former abstractions of our certain fate,

cold speculations on threescore years and ten.

Sing Lark, sing Lark to me and then

perhaps the scented hour will seem less late.